The Year of the Rose
by Philyra912
Summary: A chronicle of the year following the events of Charon's Gift.
1. January

**Title:** The Year of the Rose

**Rating:** T

**Pairing:** D/Hr

**Time Period:** Post-HBP, Sequel to "Charon's Gift"

**Disclaimer:** Not mine. Don't sue me, I'm way, way poor. Like, "I majored in something I liked and therefore will one day live in a box" poor.

**Summary:** A chronicle of the year following the events of "Charon's Gift."

**Author's Note:** Hello, darling ones. Here we go again in my second and hopefully more successful attempt to explore the story that was begun a year and a half ago in "Charon's Gift." After deciding that my first attempt at a sequel, "Path of Thorns," needed to be scrapped, I decided to write a one-shot sequel set on Christmas Eve, precisely one year after the events of "Charon's Gift." However, once I sat down to write it, I realized I couldn't do justice to a year of changes in Hermione and Draco's lives in a single one-shot story. Thus, a rather unconventional form was born. What you are about to read is a chronicle of the highlights of Hermione's next year, going month by month until we reach that Christmas Eve one-shot that I've been stewing over for months. However, before I put too much effort into it, I thought I would post the first few months' events and see if anyone was interested. So, it is WAY important that you review and let me know if you're at all interested in continuing with this, since I'm sure a lot of you have probably moved on to bigger and better things during my ridiculously extended absences. Ok, enough rambling! On to the first installment of "The Year of the Rose."

Wait, one more thing. This is a sequel of "Charon's Gift," which was written post-HBP, and thus exists in a completely AU universe now that Deathly Hallows has appeared. If that doesn't work for you, don't bother, kids.

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**January:**

On the first day of the new year, the Death Eaters murdered two Muggle families in Bristol. Hermione held the fiancee of the of the Muggle-born witch who had been killed in the attack while he cried. Ron tossed his cigarette butt into the ruins of the burning house and watched it turn to ashes before it hit the ground, and he wondered out loud how hot a fire would have to be before it did the same thing to a human body. The flames danced on the lenses of Harry's glasses until Hermione thought his eyes looked as smoldering and inhuman as Voldemort's, and she held the sobbing fiancee tighter.

On the 5th, Hermione read that Frank Longbottom had died in St. Mungo's. She took flowers to his grave, and then took flowers to Neville's, and wondered what had happened to Trevor the toad after his owner been slaughtered trying to save the Creeveys. Then she wondered if she should bring flowers to their graves as well, and decided against it on the logic that if she began visiting every fallen acquaintance of whom she was reminded, there would not be enough flowers in all of Britain to lay upon their graves.

On the 7th, an unaddressed roll of parchment was found at the owl delivery point. The hastily scribbled words inside revealed a plot to incinerate a popular apothecary shop in Hogsmeade that was owned by a wizard and his Muggle wife. Hermione slipped the letter into the pockets of her robe and clutched the rose pendant she wore tightly in one hand, and if anyone noticed, they didn't mention it. That night, the Order successfully stopped the attack, killing three Death Eaters and losing none of their own, although two of the black-robed assailants had escaped. When the masks were pulled off the casualties and none of them had blond hair, Hermione cried.

On the 18th, George Weasley was wounded in a raid on a suspected Death Eater hideout. Fred had Apparated back to Grimmauld Place in hysterics with his unconscious brother in his arms. Hermione managed to stop the excessive bleeding from a hideous curse scar across his abdomen, but he did not wake up. Fred sat by his bedside for three days, refusing food and sleep. When he finally opened his eyes, George's first words were: "Bloody hell, Gred. You look a fright. Do run off and shower before your stench sends me back into a coma." Hermione pretended she didn't notice Fred's tears, and left the room to tell Arthur that the War had shown its first mercy to him, and had not taken another child away from him after all.

On the 25th, the Order lay in wait for sixteen hours outside an unobtrusive London flat in the freezing cold. They had inferred from what they had termed the Christmas Communication that an exchange of great importance (possibly a Horcrux, according to Ron's confident assertions) was to take place that day between Baldasarre Mezzini, a well-known Death Eater, and some unknown correspondent. No one entered or exited the building at all, and they returned to headquarters cold and disillusioned.

On the 31st, Hermione dreamt of snow and kisses. She woke up feeling content, and alone.


	2. February

**February:**

On the 3rd, information from the Christmas Communication led to the death or arrest of twelve Death Eaters in Surrey when their hideout was raided by the Order. Bellatrix Lestrange was among them, and Harry's eyes flashed emerald in the dark like the light of Avada Kedavra when he looked at her. But he didn't cast it, and she didn't die. Hermione was so repulsed by the fact a part of her wished he had that she dry-heaved into the bushes for nearly five minutes, and it was only then that she realized she hadn't eaten since the day before.

On the 10th, Draco Malfoy arrived at their doorstep, looking thin and frightened. Hermione made him tea while he talked seriously with Shaklebolt, Lupin, and Harry. As she leaned over the table to set the tea in front of them, Malfoy glanced at her . . . and then glanced again. For a moment Hermione had the absurd and disconcerting thought that he was sneaking a peak down her blouse and was ready to be furious, but then she remembered the pendant that hung around her neck, usually concealed by her clothing but no doubt visible as the neck of her over-large sweater gaped open. Her eyes shot to his, and for a moment she thought she saw relief, maybe gratitude in them, but then it was gone, and he was talking to Harry about a Dark Revel as though nothing had happened. She thought Lupin might have looked at her strangely, but he didn't say anything, and she left the room quietly and with a faint flush on her usually-pallid cheek.

On the 14th, Hermione found Harry in her room, sitting on Ginny's old bed with a mostly-empty bottle of the bootlegged firewhiskey Mundungus Fletcher had left in the pantry the night before he'd been killed. When she walked in, he turned bleary, broken eyes on her, said that he'd never told Ginny he loved her, and cried in Hermione's arms until he passed out in the final hours of a bleak Valentine's Day. Hermione tucked him into the dusty, long-unused bed, gently pried the bottle from his hand, and shot the rest of the liquor down in three gulps, relishing the way the burn almost masked the pain already smoldering in her chest.

On the 24th, Hermione realized that the only belt that still fit her (one she'd bought when she was really just out of primary school, come to think of it) no longer had enough notches to keep her horribly baggy denims on her jutting hips. That night Malfoy showed up again, needing to talk to Harry, and as he passed Hermione in the kitchen on the way out, he pushed an apple into her hand and said, "Eat something, Granger, before you blow away." She smiled, and it felt strange for her facial muscles to work that way. When she bit into the apple, it tasted like summer and sunlight, and a time before War.

On the 28th, Hermione was on the mission that retrieved Helga Hufflepuff's cup. When the party arrived back at Grimmauld Place, all alive and shining with triumph, she hugged Harry, gave Ron a kiss on the cheek, and forwent the celebration in favor of a soft pillow and the escape of sleep. That night she dreamt of the cries and pleas of the Death Eaters killed in pursuit of the cup, and she woke up choking on a scream, with tears and sweat soaking the sheets.

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A/N: Review please! 


	3. March

-1March:

On the 4th, Lupin quietly announced at dinner that he and Tonks were going to be married. As congratulations were being given with exuberance and honest happiness, Hermione glanced at Ron and wondered when she had began to picture a future that didn't involve marrying him. He caught her eye and gave her a sad smile, and when Tonks asked her why she was crying, she responded that she was just happy, and she only felt a little bad because it was only partly a lie.

On the 11th, they heard that Severus Snape had been murdered by Voldemort. Because he had been a part of her life for six years, Hermione tried to cry for him. When she couldn't, she realized she wasn't really sad he'd died, and then spent two hours crying for herself.

On the 12th, she woke up at two in the morning, and after realizing that she wouldn't be able to sleep again, went downstairs to make tea. She found Malfoy curled up on the shabby sofa in the drawing room, and was about to slip out of the room when she realized he wasn't asleep, but was instead staring into the fire with wet, red, devastated eyes. A few minutes later, she returned with two cups in hand. Malfoy was sitting up now, and accepted the tea without comment. They sat together on the sofa, sipping tea and watching the fire in silence. Near dawn, he said in a broken voice, "He was the only person who asked me if I was alright after she died. He was the only one who cared about me." After a moment, she whispered, "No, he wasn't." By the time the rest of the house made it downstairs, he was gone, and it was a testament to the changes wrought by war that no one found it odd for Hermione to be sitting alone in front of a dwindling fire with the cold dregs of long-drained tea beside her at six in the morning, staring into space. She thanked heaven for small favors that none of them could tell her thoughts were occupied, not with worry or grief, but with the memory of how the pendant around her neck had caught the fire's brilliance and cast spangles on Draco Malfoy's face, until she could not tell which shimmery red lights were his tears in the firelight and which were the scattered reflections of his jewel, which she wore so close to her heart.

On the 23rd, Ron staggered home after a three day absence, bleeding copiously and incoherent with pain. Hermione listened to his screams of agony for 6 hours before her frantic research produced a method that would heal the wounds wrought by Rodolphus Lestrange's sadistic curse work. When Ron finally lay quiet and mending, sporting unhealable scars including a long, thin one that bisected his face from left temple to right jaw and had left him blind in his left eye, Hermione retreated to her room and finally allowed herself to give into the terrified sobs that had been boiling in her chest since she'd seen Ron's blood spilling to the polished floor like rainwater. Her legs finally gave way beneath her, and she cried herself to sleep on the cold, hard floor of her bedroom.

On the 29th, while she was cleaning up after supper, Hermione realized she felt normal. She was so surprised, she dropped the dish she was holding. She no longer felt normal when, after five minutes of staring at the shards, she couldn't remember the spell to repair it because her mind was so full of spells used to destroy.


	4. April

**A/N**: Thanks for all the great responses, guys! I'm so glad you're enjoying it. I've been putting a lot of effort into the Christmas Eve one-shot all this is leading up to, so get really excited!

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**April:**

On the 2nd, the day dawned bright and unusually warm, and Hermione, who had expected to spend a miserable afternoon hunched over in the dusty library at Grimmauld Place trying to translate a runic text they had salvaged from a Death Eater hideout, allowed herself to be dragged to the Burrow for an impromptu day off from the War. She and a chattering, wedding-obsessed Tonks set out a picnic lunch while the others soared above them in a pick-up game of Quidditch, and Hermione briefly felt eighteen years old instead of eighty. In those few precious hours, she had two revelations that were marvelous and terrifying. She realized that life was going to go on after the war, and then she realized she had to find some part of herself to keep safe and whole if she wanted to go on with it.

On the 9th, Harry and Ron left in the middle of the night with no warning, leaving a note behind with a few brief words of farewell and a vague explanation about Horcruxes. Lupin, Fred, George, Arthur, and Tonks watched Hermione with trepidation all day, but she gave none of them the satisfaction of seeing her cry, or scream.

On the 14th, Professors McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout dragged themselves through the front door of Number 12 Grimmauld Place, filthy, slightly wounded, and exhausted. They announced that they had barely had time to evacuate the students before the Death Eaters had overrun the school with the aid of their giant, dementor, and werewolf allies. Voldemort had taken over Hogwarts. Hermione made everyone tea, and they drank a quiet toast to the passing of an age.

On the 22nd, nothing of any importance happened, but for some reason, Hermione found that more terrifying than anything else.

On the 26th, Tonks dragged Hermione out of the house to go shopping for a bridesmaid's dress. Hermione protested that it was an irresponsible, frivolous indulgence in the middle of a war, but she was overruled. The afternoon was silly and normal, and she was startled to realize when she returned home that a small bit of weight had lifted from her heart, and for a few hours, she could breathe.

On the 30th, Hermione made a noble effort to drink herself into oblivion. Around midnight, as she was puking her stomach contents into the first floor toilet, McGonagall silently entered the bathroom and began to sweep Hermione's hair away from her sweaty face and plait it neatly down her back. Her former teacher's competent, non-judgmental reticence was more powerful in those moments than a thousand doses of Veritiserum, and soon Hermione was sobbing against the rough tartan wool of McGonagall's robes, pouring out how much she missed her mother and Molly Weasley, Ginny and her friends from school, every single person she'd watched die while she lived, and most of all Harry and Ron, who could be dead or wounded or captured or even successfully destroying Horcruxes. As McGonagall sat on the cold linoleum of a vomit-scented bathroom stroking her hair, Hermione admitted that more than death, more than grief, more than losing the war, she feared above all things being the one left behind.

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**A/N**: Review, review, review! 


	5. May

-1**May: **

On the 3rd, Malfoy arrived at Grimmauld Place unannounced. He burst through the door with a loud bang that sent Mrs. Black's portrait screaming. The shrieked insults brought every occupant in the house scrambling down the narrow halls and staircases, and Hermione, who had been washing up dinner alone, bolting out of the kitchen. She alone, then, bore witness to the feral panic, the almost inhuman terror that creased every plane and shadow of his gaunt face . . . and than melted into the most exquisite and complete relief she had ever seen when his gaze finally focused on her. Before the first person scrambled down the last flight of stairs, his eyes were as expressionless as an ivory statue's. When the portrait had been quieted and the Order was assembled in the dining room, Malfoy reported solemnly that the Death Eaters were responsible for a small massacre, not two miles away, in which 9 Muggles and a young Muggleborn witch had been killed, and the Order was going to need to move quickly if they wanted to contain the situation. He wouldn't meet Hermione's eyes the rest of the night.

On the 4th, Hermione was awoken at 1:30 by a frantic knocking on her bedroom door. When she answered it, Malfoy grabbed her upper arms so hard it hurt, jerked her against him, and buried his face in her hair while he trembled uncontrollably. "I thought it was you," he whispered in a raw voice. "I thought it was you." A second later, he was gone, and if it weren't for the faint but darkening shadows of his fingers on her arms, she might have believed it a particularly surreal, but not particularly bad, dream.

On the 15th, Hermione ran across a pair of Harry's denims while doing the wash. She argued with herself for most of the day before finally working up the courage to go into the room Harry and Ron had shared before their abrupt departure. The room was stuffy, dusty, and jumbled from the daily life and rather sudden exit of two less-than-tidy teenage boys. After magicking away the dust and clutter, Hermione carefully set the folded denims on Harry's bed. Just as she was about to leave, she noticed that besides their brooms, the Invisibility Cloak, and a few basic necessities, only one thing was missing from the room: a small, framed wizarding photograph of Harry, Ron, and Hermione taken around their third year of Hogwarts. For the first time since they'd left her behind, Hermione took a break from simultaneously being terrified for them and hating them, and allowed herself to smile remembering them.

On the 22nd, Hermione cut off her hair. With her gaunt face, rail-thin frame, bagging clothes and the newly-short cap of curls that barely wisped over her ears, she knew she probably looked more like a pre-pubescent street urchin than a young woman of nineteen years, but she wasn't sorry. She'd had to change something, anything she could control, before feeling helpless made her lose her mind.

On the 29th, the Order raided the house where Malfoy said he had been staying with several Death Eaters a few weeks previously. The house's occupants appeared to have made a successful if hasty exit, but they did find a small cache of rare spellbooks and a few rolls of parchment detailing an upcoming plan to poison a Muggle primary school in London, and the mission was considered a success. That night, Hermione was alone in the house and passing the time by doing a cursory examination of the spellbooks when she found a small scrap of parchment tucked inside _Mad Magicks: A Guide to Psychological Curses, Hexes, and Jinxes_. On the paper was an intricate sketch of a rose, and when she held it, she no longer felt alone.

**A/N**: Review, please!


	6. June

-1**June:**

On the 5th, Hermione gathered up what money she had and went into Muggle London in search of jeans that actually fit her. However, as she turned a corner she saw a little black dress in a shop window and promptly lost her head and used every note she had to purchase it. She took it home, put it on, and noted that after spending all her adolescence bemoaning too-wide hips and those extra five pounds around the middle, it had only taken a year of war and grief to achieve the coveted heroin-chic look she'd shamefully admired in Muggle fashion models. Upon realizing that she had nothing to dress up for in the foreseeable future, Hermione wore her little black dress around the house all day, and wondered if she was perhaps going just a little bit mad.

On the 9th, it had been two months since anyone had heard or seen anything of Ron and Harry. After lunch, when the house was deserted, Hermione quietly entered the bedroom her missing friends had shared. She cleared away another month's layer of dust, vanished the cobwebs that had accumulated in the corners of the room, and chased away a small nest of doxies that had taken up residence in the curtains. When the room was clean, Hermione lit one of the cigarettes left on Ron's scarred nightstand and let it burn in the ashtray, sat on Harry's bed, and missed them.

On the 16th, a short and vicious battle between the Order and a small faction of Death Eaters concluded in Hermione killing Walden MacNair to prevent him from killing Lupin. Afterward, everyone at Grimmauld Place offered their solemn congratulations to Hermione, remarking on her bravery, her skill, the success of the battle. She was stoic until Draco, who had arrived at headquarters as soon as he'd heard of the battle, dragged her into the dark hall outside the dining room, pulled her head to his shoulder, and whispered, "I'm so sorry, Granger." Only then did she begin to cry, and to mourn for the small, pure part of herself that had died when she'd taken a life, the latest casualty of war.

On the 23rd, Hermione realized that she would have been taking her NEWTS right now, if she had returned to school and if it had not fallen to Voldemort. She quickly put an end to this train of thought, because the "if" game was a dangerous one to play when you were all alone at night with the memories of the lost.

On the 28th, Hermione, in a fit of domesticity, went about the house cleaning and straightening the multitudes of empty bedrooms on the upper, generally unused floors of Number 12 Grimmauld Place. On the 5th floor, she found what she assumed to be Sirius's brother's old room: spartan, grim, and apparently untouched since the untimely death of its occupant. As she was cleaning, she discovered a Muggle record player and a few well-worn albums secreted away in a false bottom of his closet the way most teenage boys hide dirty magazine or cigarettes. She ran her fingers over the dusty, clearly-cherished belongings of a long-dead boy, and wondered if anyone had ever truly mourned his passing, since he had died a traitor to both sides. Her naturally curious nature got the best of her, and she pulled out the topmost album and set the needle to it. For a long time she sat there on the dusty floor of Regulus Black's bedroom with the soaring notes of Puccini's _La Boheme _all around her, and wondered at how very many forms of magic there are in the world.


	7. July

-1**July:**

On the 1st, Harry and Ron walked in the front door of Grimmauld Place, dirty, hungry, tired, but triumphant. They walked into the sitting room, where Hermione was curled up with a book, and when she saw them, saw their looks of mingled apology and trepidation, saw the way they appeared more like motherless, mischievous urchins than soldiers in a war, she felt almost three months of terror and anger wash away. "How'd it go?" she asked in what she considered an admirably casual tone. Ron still looked semi-terrified of her, but the corners of Harry's mouth were beginning to twitch upward, and she knew he understood. "Not bad," he replied in an equally casual tone. "What the bloody hell have you done to your hair?" She laughed as she touched the short curls around her ears, and Harry grinned, and Hermione felt something in her chest that had been subtly misaligned right itself as if it had never been out of place at all.

On the 7th, the Order held an official meeting of it's entire membership to discuss the matter of the Horcruxes. Harry and Ron, during their absence, had managed to destroy both the locket and a pair of spectacles that had belonged to Rowena Ravenclaw herself. Draco had been invited to the meeting in order to pick his brain on the best way to approach Nagini the snake, whom they suspected of being the sixth Horcrux. He could not offer much insight, since as a Death Eater of low rank, he rarely if ever saw Voldemort in person. As he was leaving, he brushed Hermione's hand with his when he walked by her, and when Harry asked her why her cheeks were flushed, she lied right to his face and told him the room was just too warm.

On the 15th, it began raining as Hermione was walking back from the market. For a few brief moments, she hurried forward as if to outrun the raindrops, but she almost immediately came to a halt and looked up at the sky. It was a sudden sort of shower, the kind where the clouds burst open and weep their burdens down in furious, heavy sheets. She dropped her bags to the ground, turned her face upward, and let the downpour wash over her. It felt like a cleansing, like a benediction, and she breathed in the scent of rainwater, smashed tomatoes, and spilled orange juice, thinking nothing had ever smelled so sweet, or so free.

On the 24th, Draco walked into the kitchen just after lunch. Hermione, alarmed, was about to ask him what was wrong when she caught sight of his face: haunted, and lonely. She recognized that look, felt an answering twinge of pain in her chest, and went about her chores while he sat at the table, alternatively watching her with unreadable silver eyes or staring into space. Eventually, she sat down across from him with a cup of tea, which she nearly dropped when he picked up the hand she'd laid carelessly on the table. He ran his fingers over her skin as though trying to memorize its textures and imperfections, and studied their entwined hands as though they were an unsolvable enigma. After a while, he stopped this intense scrutiny and seemed content just to sit there, holding her hand in silence. She sipped her tea and kept to her own thoughts, even when he finally rose to leave. He let go of her hand almost reluctantly and then spoke for the first time that day to say, "See you tomorrow, Granger." After that, he appeared almost every day at the same time, and although those words of parting were the only ones either of them spoke, Hermione was never lonely when he was there.

On the 31st, they celebrated Harry's 18th birthday. He got silly presents, and everyone ate Hermione's horrible birthday cake as though it had been baked by the finest gourmet. The room was rich with laughter, and bright with promise. Just as the party was drawing to a close, an owl crashed through the glass of a parlour window, clutching a scroll of parchment in its talons calling for backup for an Order reconnaissance team that were currently under attack. Harry spent the first night of his 18th year being cursed and attacked, which really, in Hermione's opinion, made it no different from any other night in his short and all-too-difficult life.

**A/N**: Review, review, review!


	8. August

**A/N**: YAY for 100 reviews! I just want to thank all of you for giving this fic a chance. I know it's written in a very different form for me, and I'm so grateful that you all took the time to stick it out and try to appreciate what I was trying to do with this unconventional form! Love and kisses to you all!

P.S: See how quickly I updated? I suspected having so many reviews may have played a part in inspiring me . . . hint hint. :)

**WARNING**: I think the events of the 9th are rather disturbing, and had a difficult time writing them. If you're easily disturbed, you might just skip that day.

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**August**:

On the 3rd, Hermione went to church as she had not done since her last school holiday at home with her parents. She Apparated into the solemn shade of the tiny graveyard behind St. Mary's, her childhood church, and spent ten minutes arguing with herself before she actually went inside. She all but snuck in, half-afraid that her guilt, the taint of the life she'd chosen and the war she fought would be visible somehow and she would not be allowed entrance. She felt her hand move in the sign of the cross, the once-familiar motion feeling rusty and surreal, like a remembered dream. She lit a candle, though she couldn't have said for whom, and sat for a long time in the wise silence, not sure if she was praying or thinking, or something in between. She didn't know why she'd come, didn't know how it could help, and didn't know why, when she left, she felt a little less burdened, and more than a little less alone.

On the 9th, Death Eaters attacked the home of a Muggle-born couple during their 2-year-old's birthday party. When Hermione arrived at the scene with Lupin, McGonagall, Harry, and Ron, she thought she held herself together admirably at the sight of the slain bodies of the father and the parents' friends, which were strewn about on the lawn, wands clutched in their hands as if still unwilling to give up their vain efforts of defense. She even managed to remain outwardly unmoved when they found the Muggle grandparents in the kitchen, huddled together in death. It wasn't until she reached the parlour and Hermione had to step over the mother's lifeless form to retrieve the broken body of their tiny son, whose final tears were still wet on his cheeks, that she broke down. Harry found her cradling the small, motionless figure and sobbing incoherently, and she had to be carried out of the house. She never spoke of it again, not to anyone, but she knew that every time she looked in the mirror from that day on, the shadowed ghost of that poor, dead baby would be in her eyes.

On the 13th, when Draco got up to leave after his afternoon visit, Hermione refused to relinquish his hand and instead tugged him down to her. She kissed lips that were already parted to say his words of farewell, and after a moment or two of shocked stillness, they kissed her back. Here was the finesse, the skill that she had found so strangely lacking in that long-ago moment in the graveyard, but here also was the desperation that had made that moment so vivid, so heartbreaking and life-changing. When they broke apart to breathe, he blinked at her. "See you tomorrow then, Granger," he said finally, leaning down to brush one more kiss over her lips. After he left, she sat there for a long time, her lips burning and her fingers cold, wondering how missing Draco Malfoy's touch could provoke two such opposite reactions.

On the 17th, Hermione was the maid of honor at Tonks and Lupin's wedding. Tonks looked vibrant and lovely, her hair the jubilant shade of a summer sunrise, and Lupin looked old and quietly joyful. Hermione cried as they took their vows, got giddy on champagne, and was coerced into spinning around the dance floor in an overly-exuberant imitation of a waltz with one of the twins (she was too tipsy and moving too fast to tell which it was). For no reason at all, the whole thing made her profoundly and exquisitely sad.

On the 25th, Hermione was sitting at the kitchen table by the time Draco arrived. She found her tea spilling to the tabletop as he yanked her up from her seat, pushed her against the wall, and shoved his mouth against hers with violence. Hermione tasted blood and was ready to shove him away and demand an explanation when she tasted something else: the salty-sweet flavor of tears, and grief. For the next half hour, Hermione allowed every bruise, every too-tight embrace, every stinging bite of teeth, reveled in them in fact, hoping he recognized through his haze of lust and sorrow that she was meeting his violence with gentleness, that she was seeking to soothe a pain she didn't understand with every kiss and caress. Finally, the sound of a door shutting and the approach of footsteps persuaded Draco to draw away from her. His eyes were bright with grief, but she saw gratitude in them, and when he pressed one last feather-light kiss to her swollen lips, she knew she had been what he needed. They were both gone from the kitchen before their interrupter arrived. It wasn't until nightfall that Hermione learned Lucius Malfoy had been killed by Aurors in the early hours of the morning. When she cried, it was for a son who lost his father, and who felt for him the kind of love that sees no evil, and knows nothing of the flawed or the weak.

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**A/N**: PLEASE review! I think this is chapter is my personal favorite so far, and I really want to know what you think! 


	9. September

**A/N**: Thank you so much for the wonderful reviews everyone! When I first began posting this story, I was so proud of it, but I got very mixed reviews. However, the reviews for the last chapter especially show that you all see what I saw in this story, and why I thought it needed to be told. I can't tell you what it means to me as an author to hear that you understand and appreciate what I'm trying to do.

I had one reviewer this time comment on the fact that I don't respond to reviews. I want everyone to know that I am, in fact, reading what you write. I hang on every word, in fact! The best way to get me to respond to them is to leave me specific comments that I can comment on! It's hard for me to say anything other than "thanks" if you only tell me that you loved the chapter! I LOVE communicating with reviewers, so give me the material, and I'll do my best to respond!

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**September:**

On the 7th, Hermione was sick in bed with the flu, and spent most of the day in feverish sleep. When her fever broke that night, she realized with a pang of sadness that she had missed her daily visit with Draco, which was sometimes the only thing that kept her sane. Then she turned her head and saw a blood-red rose on her bedside table, and smiled.

On the 12th, during a minor battle between the Order and a Death Eater cell, Rodolphus Lestrange attempted to strike Hermione with his bare hand after his wand had been snapped. She barely dodged the blow, but his fingers caught on the chain she wore, and she cried out in pain when it was ripped from her neck. Lestrange stared down at the glittering pendant in his hand, the rose of rubies and emeralds glittering in the light of flying curses all around them, and Hermione watched with horror as recognition, then understanding dawned on his face, followed by a gleefully cruel smile. Before she could figure out what to do, Ron shot a killing curse at Lestrange, and he fell at her feet with the inhuman smile on his face. She snatched her precious rose from his dead hands, and then fell to her knees, her stomach seizing in pain, because she'd been so relieved to see him die.

On the 18th, Draco had not been to Grimmauld Place in more than a week, and Hermione tried not to act more worried than anyone else was. She also tried to hide the fact that she sat alone at the kitchen table every day after lunch, doing her best not to miss him so much it hurt.

On the 21st, Hermione was with the team of Order members who found a Death Eater prison in the basement of a decrepit wizarding mansion, previously believed to have been abandoned. Of the six individuals found chained in the filthy darkness, three were dead, two were the parents of a Muggle-born witch who cried for three days when she heard they would be alright, and one was Draco Malfoy. For a few brief, endless seconds, Hermione thought he was dead as well, and felt her insides shrivel up with grief. Then she saw his chest rise with a rasping breath, and realized he was bleeding, nearly starved, and death-grey, but he was alive. In his delirium, all he would say was "they know, they know." After several hours under the ministrations of young Healer who had recently joined the Order, he became just coherent enough to tell them his cover had been blown before he passed out. Hermione slept that night slumped over in the chair beside his bed so that he wouldn't have to wake up alone. The next morning, she inadvertently woke him up herself when she screamed at the glimpse she'd gotten of herself in a mirror across the room. During the night, the shock of hair that fell perpetually into her eyes had gone utterly white, like snow, like death.

On the 23rd, Draco was finally coherent enough to admit that Voldemort had, though a combination of torture and Veritiserum, extracted from him that Hermione was Secret Keeper for Number 12 Grimmauld Place. He reported this with an impassive tone and a blank face, which he kept turned toward the wall. During the discussion that followed, no one reproached Draco for his role in exposing Hermione, but she knew that if she could hear the anger and disappointment in everyone's voices, so could he. It was decided by general consensus that it was no longer safe for Hermione to leave the house for anything from Order missions to grocery shopping. She accepted the news of what basically translated as her imprisonment in the decrepit old house with what she considered admirable dignity and poise. She also waited until everyone had left before she took Draco's hand, and felt it grip hers so hard it hurt. He opened his mouth, but she thought hearing him apologize might break her heart, so she quickly leaned over kissed him just a little too hard and whispered, "I thought you were dead in that basement." She felt a tear slip off her cheek and onto his, and kissed it away. "I couldn't breathe. Please don't die again." He closed his eyes, swallowed, and squeezed her hand harder.

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**A/N**: C'mon folks, hit that review button! I'll love you for it! 


	10. October

**A/N**: Hello, darlings! Another quick update for you! Enjoy and review, and if you've finished Deathly Hallows, please read the author's note at the end and let me know what you think!

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**October:**

On the 4th, Hermione fell asleep on the couch in front of the fire, a book in her lap, her head pillowed on one bony arm. Several hours later she woke up, surprised to see the fire still burning strong. Her book was apparently gone, and she was not only stretched out comfortably on the couch but also covered in a soft, worn afghan. She felt pressure on one of her ankles, and she lifted her head just enough to see Draco sitting at the other end of the couch. He was frowning at the novel she had been reading, his brow furrowed in concentration. She wondered if he found magic in it, too, and if he was aware that his left hand was resting on her ankle, the thumb absently stroking the arch of her foot. She put her head back down before he noticed she was awake, and allowed herself to drift back into the warm arms of sleep.

On the 11th, one year to the day after Molly Weasley was slaughtered in the London streets, they found Arthur dead in his room. The official decision was that his heart had given up on him, but Hermione thought privately that it was rather the other way round, and Arthur had simply given up on himself.

On the 18th, Hermione gave her virginity to Draco Malfoy. It was storming that night, and her memory of it would always be in bright, erotic flashes in the dark: the too-sharp hollow of his collarbone as he rose above her, the startling contrast of his pale skin and her dark hair in the blue light, the shadow of his curved back and bowed head that flashed briefly on the ghost-white wall. As rain thrashed the windows and the sky roared its rage at the sleeping world below, their joining was no less full of desperate passion and violent intensity than the furious tempest. The storm grew ever-nearer, until the clouds were right above them and lightning lashed out threateningly at the trees outside Hermione's window. Thunder crashed so loudly it sounded like the world was ending and the room lit up like an apocalypse in a bad Muggle movie, but Hermione was aware of nothing except Draco's endless eyes as she fell over the edge of the world.

On the 21st, Hermione found Ron and Draco standing on the back porch. They had been coexisting in the house in a strange sort of limbo, never overtly hostile but always wary, always tense, and never ever willingly spending time together. She wasn't sure if Draco had asked or if Ron had offered, but Draco seemed to be choking his way through his first cigarette, admirably fighting back coughs while Ron respectfully pretended not to notice his struggles. They were not speaking, but they were leaning on the peeling wood railing in an almost companionable way. Hermione was torn between disapproval of Draco picking up a dangerous, unhealthy habit and a desperate desire for the two of them to reach some kind of peace. She finally decided that another smoker in the house was a small price to pay for the end of even a war as small as this one, and walked away.

On the 29th, Hermione turned around in the kitchen to find a cat perched on the counter as if it belonged there. After doing every magical test she could think of to ensure that it was, in fact, a cat and not a spy or a weapon or some other such thing, Hermione contemplated the animal for a long time. It stared back at her with gold eyes that were just a bit too large for its intelligent face. "My last cat was murdered by evil wizards," she informed the animal bluntly. The cat tilted its head to one side, as if to say "And? Your point?" Hermione shrugged her shoulders. "Just wanted to make sure you know what you're getting into." The cat licked one paw delicately and began to clean its sleek face, which Hermione took to be both an acceptance of her implied offer and a dismissal of her company. Hermione named her new companion Athena, and although everyone in the house tried to make friends with her, the cat would not deign to pay attention to anyone but Draco, who, being both allergic to cats and generally opposed to the idea of pets on the principles of both dignity and hygiene, spent most evenings attempting to research or read with a slightly appalled look on his face while Athena purred happily in his lap.

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**A/N**: Review review review!

**WARNING: DH SPOILERS AHEAD!** A proposal for you, darling ones: I'm currently obsessed with the Snape/Lily Potter relationship that was revealed in DH. Would anyone be interested in reading a one-shot? It's not even close to being done yet, but I just wanted to know what everyone thought. Ok, that's it! Review please!


	11. November

**November:**

On the 2nd, Hermione woke too early and wandered into the library to find Ron there, sipping his coffee and blowing smoke out a half-open window. He didn't turn when she entered, but when she sat down beside him, he didn't seem surprised. After a long silence, he spoke so suddenly it startled her. "I loved you so much once," Ron said quietly, with a hint of sadness but with no bitterness, no regret. "But he loves you more, more than I knew how to." Panic stole her breath, but before she could get it back to pretend innocence, he turned and looked at her with dark, wise eyes, and she knew it was useless. "How did you know?" she asked finally. Ron turned away again, his damaged eye staring unseeingly out the window. "Because sometimes I see him start to lose faith. When you come into the room, he lights back up, starts believing again. You make him fight like he has something to fight for. He's the only one left who does." "Why do _you_ fight, then?" she asked. "Habit," he whispered emotionlessly, and the cloud of smoke that he exhaled with the word caught the first red-orange ray of sunrise. She thought he looked like a wounded dragon: fierce and blind, breathing fire at nothing at all.

On the 9th, Hermione decided to occupy some of her time cleaning out Number 12 Grimmauld Place's seemingly-endless attic. After several hours of work, the only things she had really accomplished were kicking up clouds of decades-old dust and angering some of the animals from an enchanted glass menagerie. By mid-afternoon she was covered in a thin gray layer of dust, and shooting stunning spells at the various brightly-colored, glass-winged birds that were twittering around her head, apparently attempting to nest in her hair. She didn't realize she was being watched until she heard rusty chuckles from the doorway. She looked up to find Draco Malfoy grinning and shaking his head, laughing at her with affection in his eyes. It was the loveliest thing she had ever seen.

On the 14th, Hermione awoke in the middle of the night. Outside, the first snowflakes of the year were drifting down from an utterly black sky. She slid out from beneath Draco's arm and went to the window, pulling a sheet around her chilled shoulders. A moment later, she felt rather than heard Draco come up behind her, and soon his face joined hers in the eerie reflection they cast in the grimy windowpanes. She was entranced by the picture they made. In the frosting glass, their scars were blurred into nothingness, and instead of gaunt and hardened, they looked like slender wraiths, tragically beautiful. Skin that was pallid and stretched too taut in normal light looked nearly translucent now, luminous and unearthly in the forgiving moon glow, and Draco's hair shone like spun silver where it spilled over their entwined arms. His eyes were cast down, like the perpetually-dreaming models of surrealist art, but her own were open, staring back out at her from the glass, dark, huge, and haunted. They looked, she thought, like ghostly lovers, wrapped forever in a hopeless embrace, eternally young, lovely in death. She turned suddenly in his arms and crushed her mouth to his, desperate to feel alive, to feel flawed and real, and to banish the spectral vision in the glass that she had to believe was just the interpretation of a dark imagination and not a premonition of their fate.

On the 19th, Hermione finished her favorite book, for perhaps the twelfth or thirteenth time of her life. She mouthed the last few lines as she read them, her fingers tracing over the beloved words: "_So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past_." She was on the verge of pondering that thought in all its terror and enormity when she allowed the pages to flip back as they would. They stopped on the blank front page, where faded words were scrawled in her father's elegant, spiky script. The book had been a gift from her parents, many years before, and the words they had written on it drove all thoughts from her mind but memories of them. The last time she'd seen them, she had been saying goodbye, knowing it was probably forever, and all she could remember was how frightened and vulnerable they looked and how they had pleaded with her for answers she couldn't give them. That moment seemed so removed from the life she lived now that she didn't quite believe the memory was hers. She realized, then, that she had stopped missing them a long time ago. She was so appalled she couldn't even cry.

On the 28th, Ginny Weasley had been dead for exactly one year. Hermione cried into her pillow all day. Harry and Ron both came in separately to talk to her, but she ignored them until they went away. Draco was conspicuously absent all day, but after everyone had given up and gone to bed, he came into her room and slid into bed beside her, curling around her protectively. He kissed her temple, her ear, her throat, her face, the lids of her eyes, and finally her mouth. His kisses were gentle but insistent, undeniable, drawing her slowly out of her grief. "It's time to come back," they seemed to say. "Come back to me now."

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**Quote:** "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." _The Great Gatsby_ by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

**A/N:** Review, review, review!


	12. December

**A/N**: Ok, all, here is the final month! An early Thanksgiving present from me to you! I really want to thank everyone for bearing with me while I found my rhythm with this story, which I know is different enough from my usual writing that it probably doesn't suit everyone's tastes. Thank you again for all your support!

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**December:**

On the 3rd, Hermione dreamed of the Final Battle, and woke up with visions of fire and blood and death burned into her eyes, like the phantom aftermath of a camera flash. She pulled a sheet around her shoulders and dashed barefoot down the hall to Draco's room. He was sitting by the window, looking out at the darkness, as if he had been waiting for her all along. She went to him, pressed her face into his neck while his arms banded around her like an anchor, like a touchstone. "Lie to me, Draco," she whispered. "I need you to lie to me tonight." He pulled back long enough to search her face, but he did not insult her by asking if she was sure. He led her over to the bed, laid her down upon in, and in between kisses he said, "Everything will be alright. The Great Battle is far off, and we are ready for it. We will win. We will survive. When it is over, we will be whole and happy, and things will be normal. Everything will be alright."

On the 10th, Draco and Hermione had a screaming row that had started over nothing but which soon came to be about everything. She was shouting and crying, and he was storming around, moving his arms wildly and barking hateful rebukes to her fury. At the pinnacle of their row, Hermione fairly screamed that she hated him and he rounded on her and yelled back, "I hate you, too! This is YOUR fault!" "What is?" she snapped angrily, too consumed by her unfocused fury to notice that his voice had cracked, wavered, changed. He grabbed her by the upper arms and all but shook her. "I was ready!" he shouted into her face. "I was ready to die, and then YOU had to go and change everything, and now I DON'T THINK I CAN DO THIS!" He seemed to deflate, until, instead of a towering, fierce warrior, he stood before her a frightened, thin boy, his head bowed in grief. "I'm not ready to leave you, and I HATE you for it." She felt her own anger dissipate like ash and smoke, and she clutched his arms as he was clutching hers, her grasping fingers skeletal and nearly grotesque. As soon as she did, a dry painful sound, a sob but not a sob, was wrenched from his throat. He sank to his knees and she went with him, and she held him while he trembled and shook and refused to cry, wondering what cruel god would see fit to feed a tyrant's war with the lives of children, and who would so often allow the hardest thing and the right thing to be one and the same.

On the 14th, on the eve of the Final Battle, Hermione didn't sleep at all. Instead, she sat up through the night with Harry and Ron, talking. They talked about holidays at the Burrow and Hogsmeade weekends, about the DA and the Fred and George's pranks. They told stories about Hagrid and Ginny and Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood, and never spoke of how they'd died. They laughed at old pictures, and teased each other about the various embarrassments of adolescence that are remembered with such rueful affection with a few years distance between them. For a while, they were seventeen, and Ron was not blind and scarred and Hermione was not gaunt and pallid and Harry was not afraid that he would die tomorrow and take the world with him. It was a fleeting, fragile night and it was over too quickly, but it was enough. It had to be.

On the 19th, Harry Potter killed Lord Voldemort. Hermione survived. When it came right down to it, that was all she would remember of that monumental day: that she had lived through it. It was the one scenario she had never considered.

On the 21st, after the wounded had been tended and everyone had had time to rest, a celebration party was thrown at Number 12 Grimmauld Place. Hermione went upstairs to ask Draco if he wanted to join them, and found him lying on his bed, chain smoking in the dark. When she asked him to come downstairs, he scoffed at her. "What is there to celebrate?" he asked with a weariness that chilled her. "It's over, Draco. The war's over," she replied tentatively. His hollow voice echoed out of the darkness: "It will never be over. Only the dead have seen the end of war." Instead of going down to join the party, Hermione crawled into bed with him, curling against his side with his strong heartbeat beneath her ear, wishing he wasn't so bitter, or so right.

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**Quote:**

"Only the dead have seen the end of war" - Plato

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**A/N**: DON'T PANIC!! This is not the end! Remember, I've written a one-shot set on Christmas Eve, which will wrap up the Charon's Gift world with a bit more up than this December entry. However, I have a question for you: Should I really just post the one-shot as the final chapter of "The Year of the Rose," as I intended to, or post it as an entirely different story? It is not written in the choppy, scene-by-scene format of "Year of the Rose," but is much more similar to "Charon's Gift" in terms of style and format. What do you think?

**A/N 2:** It's official! This is the final chapter of "The Year of the Rose." I am posting the one-shot (now officially entitled "Love Song of Dante and Beatrice") as a seperate story. It is complete, and once I find someone to beta for me, it will be posted. Thanks again for all your support! PS: Anyone have an aspirations to become a beta? It would be one time-deal, just for this one-shot, but any volunteers would be appreciated!


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